Can Geoengineering Solve Climate Change?

Alexi Barnstone

Climate change is happening. We aren’t here to argue about that. 97% of scientists agree that climate change is a result of man-made carbon emissions and the other 3% are sponsored by ExxonMobil.

The world is headed toward calamity and yet for some reason the slow apocalypse seems far less menacing. We just don’t seem that fussed that the world is sizzling.

Which begs the question; why are we so idle in our demise? All we have to do is keep doing exactly what we are doing and eventually we will render our own earth unrecognisable.

So why aren’t we doing more? Are we that apathetic? Or naive? Or ignorant? Maybe. But there is often another sentiment that you can see in people. They fail to change their ways or push for real reform because they believe that we can invent our way out of the problem. A lot of people think that through human genius we will be able to find a solution to the perpetually worsening problem.

Geoengineering is often cited as that human fix. A good portion of people, who fully accept that the climate change is real and not a hoax created by the Chinese to steal American manufacturing jobs, believe that we have geoengineering solutions that will reverse the damages of our carbon emissions. They believe that by manipulating the environment we can soften the impacts of our own inventions. That we can solve the problems of one invention with another, better invention.

But can we?

The most popular geoengineering project is called the Pinatubo Option. The Pinatubo Option is named after the volcano Pinatubo that exploded in 1991. When the volcano erupted in 1991 it launched a huge amount of sulfate into the atmosphere. Sulfate is reflective and can bounce sunlight off of it like any mirror. When the massive amounts of sulfate was released it drifted through the stratosphere and spread out, encompassing the world and creating an artificial blanket over the earth.

The sulfate partially reflected the sun rays headed toward mother earth, meaning less sunlight hit earth for the following couple of years. The year following the eruption of Mount Pinatubo global temperatures fell by half a degrees Celsius.

Many climate scientists herald this as the solution to our problems. If we can harness the power of a volcano, and create a man-made Pinatubo, then we could use sulfate in the stratosphere to counteract the damages our earth incurs and keep global temperatures down. This solution came to be known as the Pinatubo Option. A man-made volcanic eruption could be a pretty nifty solution to the climate change.

But is it actually?

Here are five very distinct issues with the Pinatubo option, in descending order from a little less bad to holy shit we might all be doomed if we take this path.

The sky may never be blue again. If more and more sulfate is launched into the stratosphere we may never see another perfect blue sky. The sulfate would partially block out the sun, saving us from extreme heat, but also creating a perpetually gloomy world.

Eruptions would have to be constantly manufactured to keep temperatures under control. If we did manage to harness nature and lower temperatures down to pre-industrial levels using this method that would be great. But then we would have to keep them there. The economic costs of running a yearly space launch of sulfate could be huge. And what if it ever got derailed? Say, if the country running the project went to war and someone bombed the launch site? Then all the progress would be overturned. Faster than we could prepare, all the sun’s rays would come flooding back and skyrocket global temperatures. Who knows what kind of damage that could do.

The research is not finished yet. We will probably, at some point in time, be able to enact the Pinatubo strategy if we want to. But that doesn’t mean we are ready to do that now. It may take another 50 years of field labs and testing to get close to being able to launch this fix, and by then, who knows what the world will be like? The world bank has projected that there will be as many as 143 million climate refugees by 2050. That is only 31 years away. And it is not like all these refugees will suddenly be forced out of their homes at once, the effects of global warming may force people into refugee status far sooner. The Maldives will be under water in 30 years. Can we afford to wait for our scientists to figure all of this out? Or by then will it be too late?

An actual volcano could go off. If a natural eruption happened it would add extra sulfate. If our scientists had calculated the perfect amount, what could the repercussions be if extra sulfate was thrown into the stratospheric mix? Here is one answer: The world could suddenly overcorrect and we could accidentally start another ice age.

Rain patterns would not be the same. Now I know what you are thinking. Why is this at the bottom? Surely another ice age is far worse than shifting rain patterns. But I beg to differ. The reason is two-fold. Firstly, a man-made volcanic launch could cause massive droughts. In 2008 a paper by Alan Roback explained this in the journal for Geophysical Research. Sulfur dioxide injections into the stratosphere “would disrupt the Asian and African summer monsoons, reducing precipitation to the food supply for billions of people.” The monsoons provide freshwater crucial to the survival of billions of people. India, for example, receives between 70–90% of its total amount of annual rainfall during its June-September monsoon season. In fact, we already know that these types of eruptions have a drastic effect on peoples supply to freshwater and livelihood. In 1992, the year after Pinatubo exploded, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) reported that South Asia experienced a drought that was the “most severe in the last century.” It was estimated that around 120 million people were affected. Half the population of Zimbabwe required food aid that year. Crop loss across the region was upward of 50%.

And that is only the half of it. The second reason why the potential shifting rain patterns is the worst outcome of the Pinatubo option is that the way the eruption would affect earth changes depending on where you launch. If you launch sulfate into the stratosphere from the northern hemisphere, southern countries tend to suffer more (based on the models). And if you launch from the southern countries the reverse is true. So where do we set this whole project up? It is very improbable that the global powers, such as the United States, would agree to set up the operation in impoverished nations and sacrifice their own rainfall. But could we let global powerhouses dictate where the set up is run? Would it be moral to let millions of people in Africa die to save those of us lucky enough to be born in the United States? Definitely not. The developed nations are responsible for the majority of carbon emissions, but they also would likely not allow this type of program to be run in any fashion that would damage them. Countries operate out of their own self-interest. And the countries with the power to run the Pinatubo Option give us no reason to assume they would operate any differently if it came to this geoengineering fix. This would leave us with a horrible form of self-preservation at the expense of others. It would be pure evil if the US, the country responsible for the most emissions, kept emitting greenhouse gasses and condemned Africans, who are least responsible for global warming, to death in order to preserve their fossil fuel way of life. Is driving an electric car, building a wind farm, and using less plastic really worse than millions of dead people?

Of course, there are other proposed geoengineering solutions to the issue. But none really seem to offer a full solution to the problem. The Pinatubo Option is often heralded by many in the climate change community as a possible way out of this conundrum we have driven, flown and drilled our way into. But why, if there are so many issues with the geoengineered solve, is it propagated as a practical solution?

The answer is simple and depressing. We believe in Prometheanism. Prometheanism, a term popularized by the political theorist John Dryzek, describes the belief that the Earth is a resource for human needs and interests, and that environmental problems are overcome through human innovation. We believe in Prometheanism because it is easier to believe that we can invent our way out of a problem that we invented than change our ways. The other option is a complete overhaul of our economic system, which predicates itself on oil, gas, and coal. Instead of driving less, demanding we change our consumption habits and forcing big oil to stop fracking we sleep comfortably at night confident that our best and brightest will find a way out of our cataclysmic creep toward impending doom. That by some miracle of the human invention we will find a quick fix. It is easier to believe this, and do nothing, than not believe it, and change everything.

And big oil and gas love Prometheanism. In fact, a lot of the geoengineering conferences, workshops and symposiums have direct ties to the biggest polluters in the world. It might at first seem counterintuitive, why would Exxon Mobil fund a climate change conference on geoengineering? But it makes perfect sense.

There is nothing better for ExxonMobil, British Petroleum and Chevron Corporation than convincing people to believe in Prometheanism and geoengineering solutions. By funding large projects and promotions for geoengineering big oil and big coal can make it look like they aren’t the bad guys. The fossil fuel industry needs to convince you that we can invent a solution to climate change to ensure that they can keep maximizing their return to shareholders. They don’t make as much money if you drive less, and there would be nothing worse for these mega companies than a transition to green energy. So they peddle the perfect narrative; why would we bother putting in all this effort to changing everything about society if we can launch sulfate into the stratosphere and fix the problem without having to change anything about our lives?

The fossil fuel industry wants to keep you dormant, inactive, and wasteful by convincing you to believe in a technological fix that doesn’t exist yet. Of course, there could very well be some magical invention in the future that helps us solve climate change. But why would we hedge our bets on technology that doesn’t exist when we already have solutions to the problem today? We know what we have to do — renewable energy, carbon tax, no fracking — so let’s stop believing in a mystical fix and implement the ones we already have.